A comparative study of trace element levels in coronary artery tissue of Coronary heart disease patients with serum levels in healthy individuals

Background: Cardiovascular disease/Coronary artery disease (CAD), leading cause of global morbidity and mortality covers any disease of the circulatory system. In-vivo antioxidant nutrients which include vitamin C, trace elements such as Se, Zn and Cu play a crucial role in defending against oxidant damage. Objective: The aim of the present study was to investigate the changes occurring in the levels zinc (Zn), copper (Cu), and Selenium (Se) in coronary artery tissues of patients with CAD. Material and methods: Coronary artery samples collected from these patients during bypass surgery from known CAD patients. These samples were analyzed for Se, Zn, and Cu; results are expressed in terms of wet weight. Normal Healthy serum Se, Zn, and Cu levels were also analyzed to compare with coronary artery samples. Results: The levels of Zn, Cu and Se in patient’s coronary artery samples were observed to be very low when compare to Zn, Cu and Se levels of healthy person’s serum samples. In addition, our study showed that the levels of Zn and Cu in coronary artery samples were low when they compared to heart tissue Zn and Cu levels from CVD patients from other studies. Whereas, Se levels in coronary artery samples in our study are same as heart tissues samples in previous other studies. Yet, there was limited/no observational studies were published to identify levels of trace element levels in coronary artery samples. Hence our present observations interpreted the levels of Zn, Cu and Se in coronary artery samples with 20 numbers of sample size only; further, higher number of samples needed to formulate the standard reference ranges of these trace elements in setting up a newer biochemical marker in correlation/interpretation of CVD/CAD. Conclusion: The finding of our results showed that Se levels in coronary artery observed to be same as heart tissue levels from other study. The myocardial clinical manifestation seems to be due to alteration of levels of these trace elements in serum, tissue levels in patients. In our studies, however, the patients with coronary heart disease had, in general, lower concentrations of Zinc, copper in serum than the healthy controls.